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A review by mfeezell
Dracula by Bram Stoker
2.0
On the one hand, choosing to read this book aloud like some sort of horrible amateur theater production with Jake was probably a terrible idea. It took an absurd amount of time and patience to finish, and you also realize how little Bram had to say throughout most of this, at least when he wasn’t saying something incredibly racist. But on the other hand, this book genuinely has some interesting and compelling parts to it that I felt I had more time to appreciate. The female characters were written far more thoughtfully than I expected, and the journal-style entries were really fun, especially when read aloud.
However, it’s fascinating to me that this is the book that established our modern idea of the vampire because so many gothic stories before and after this were far, FAR more compelling as horror stories. Part of it was that he did incredibly little to make anything scary outside of evoking the vague notion of foreign people moving into a house down the road from you, which I guess was the peak of terror for this man. But the other part of it is that most of this book is taken up by people talking broadly about the scary things that happened to them that day, which was a major flaw with the journal-style entries. The tension wasn’t ever built properly, so it was mostly just goofy the whole way through. Ultimately, I’m glad to live over 100 years later, where far better authors have written far better vampire stories in spite of what Bram Stoker could provide us.
However, it’s fascinating to me that this is the book that established our modern idea of the vampire because so many gothic stories before and after this were far, FAR more compelling as horror stories. Part of it was that he did incredibly little to make anything scary outside of evoking the vague notion of foreign people moving into a house down the road from you, which I guess was the peak of terror for this man. But the other part of it is that most of this book is taken up by people talking broadly about the scary things that happened to them that day, which was a major flaw with the journal-style entries. The tension wasn’t ever built properly, so it was mostly just goofy the whole way through. Ultimately, I’m glad to live over 100 years later, where far better authors have written far better vampire stories in spite of what Bram Stoker could provide us.